Acts 22-23 (NAB)
Paul is on trial at the Sanhedrin. Ananias, the high priest, is really annoyed, orders his attendants to smack Paul in the mouth. Things are getting tense, then…
Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees, so he called out before the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; [I] am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead.” When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the group became divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection or angels or spirits, while the Pharisees acknowledge all three. A great uproar occurred, and some scribes belonging to the Pharisee party stood up and sharply argued, “We find nothing wrong with this man. Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” The dispute was so serious that the commander, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, ordered his troops to go down and rescue him from their midst and take him into the compound. (Acts 23:6-10)
The Point:
There is no point. It just sounded like a scene out of Monty Python, or They Call Me Bruce?, and it struck me as funny and made me laugh. Maybe God really does have a sense of humor.
But it did make me wonder – all that stuff in Paul’s letters to the churches about the resurrection, and the rapture, and angels… was that just Paul’s training as a Pharisee, opinions he formed long before he became a Christian evangelist? I mean, if he’d been a Sadducee, would the New Testament have a whole different spin?